It’s the middle of June 1994 and before we get started on this week’s TOTP, it’s time I popped back into my personal life to see what I was up to back then. After three moves in four months at work, I’d ended up back where I’d started my career at Our Price at the Market Street store in Manchester. Despite being apprehensive initially, I’d kind of settled into being back there and was about to clock up a solid six months when everything changed again. The store manager took me aside one day and told me that he’d got a job at HMV (traitor!) and would be leaving soon. Fair play, good luck to him and all that but his change of employer would have ramifications for me.
The manager asked to replace him was my old boss at the Market Street store who I liked and so I had no concerns about him coming in. Unfortunately, he had some concerns about me. It was nothing personal but he was overseeing the start up of two new Our Price stores at Manchester airport and would continue with that as well as managing the Market Street branch. As such, he wouldn’t be around that much and wanted a more experienced Assistant Manager than me in place and so a guy from down South who wanted a move up North was transferred into my position.
So where did that leave me? Area management shunted me up the road to the Piccadilly store. It was my worst nightmare come true. The Piccadilly store had quite the reputation for a…let’s say ‘colourful’ clientele. In other words it’s where all the scallies and shoplifters hung out. They employed a full time security guard there (we didn’t have one at Market Street). Plus, they were a single floor store and the trading area was massive which made it hard to police plus a lot of work to make it look appealing to customers. We had two floors at Market Street but they were much smaller in size and much more manageable. To say I wasn’t keen on going there was an understatement. Somebody jokingly wrote in my leaving card that he’d heard they’d installed gun turrets at Piccadilly to control the scallies. Gulp! In the end, I lasted about five months in Piccadilly and hated nearly every minute. Not long after I arrived, the security guard left and a new guy came in. I’d had a look in the previous incumbent’s security log one day and it was full of entries that just said ‘nothing to report’. My experience of the store couldn’t have been further removed from that assessment. The new security bloke was shit hot at catching shoplifters and I spent most of my days sat with him and his latest capture in the shop kitchen waiting for the police to arrive. The previous guy had worn a security outfit and spent most his time chatting to the staff as far as I could see. This new fella wore ‘undercover’ clothes and loved nothing more than apprehending thieves and there seemed to be lots of them to catch. I just wanted to sell some records to punters. I didn’t want any of this. My time there will probably influence my opinions on the songs on TOTP for the next few months as most of them I associate with my miserable experience in Piccadilly. You have been warned.
Right. With all that said, it’s time for the show and we have another ‘golden mic’ guest presenter this week in the form of Angus Deayton. You remember him. The gangly looking bloke who hosted HaveIGotNewsForYou and was in One FootInTheGrave as Victor Meldrew’s neighbour. Whatever happened to him? Well, the short answer is cocaine and prostitutes. In May 2002, The News Of The World exposed his extra curricular activities leading to an excruciating appearance on HIGNFY where he was mercilessly teased by Paul Merton and Ian Hislop. After more allegations in the October, Deayton was dismissed from the show and despite continuing to work in TV and radio, his media profile has never been as high since. Back in 1994 though, his choice as TOTP host made perfect sense. He was a confident presenter and his suave demeanour even led to him being labelled as ‘TV’s Mr Sex’ in Time Out magazine. Oh the irony.
The first act Deayton has to introduce are TheGrid who are riding high in the charts with their hit “Swamp Thing”. There’s a lot going on in this performance and most of it is pretty weird. I have to start with the banjo player who is hooked up to some machinery which is giving me heavy AClockworkOrange vibes, specifically the scene where Alex undergoes aversion therapy with his eyes pulled permanently open. Then there’s the guy who seems to have fashioned himself a crown of safety pins. Finally, the fact that everyone on stage is dressed head to toe in white and safety pin guy has the slogan ‘No pain, no gain’ in big black letters on his top makes it all look like you’re watching Wham! performing “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” in their ‘Choose Life’ T-shirts but if you were coming down from a bad trip. As I said, decidedly weird.
Just when I thought the time of 2Unlimited was coming to an end and despite their last single being on its way down the charts at No 32 this week, the TOTP producers have still managed to manufacture yet another slot for them to appear on the show. “No One” was a track from their album “Real Things” which, rather surprisingly to me, was the No 1 album this particular week. It would eventually be released as a single three months later and peaked at No 17 which presents the frightening prospect of it being on the show again a few weeks down the line. For all the accusations against them that their songs all sounded the same, this one was slightly different. I mean, it wasn’t a big ballad or anything but it didn’t t seem to have that 2 Unlimited bpm urgency. In fact, it sounds like any other Eurodance hit of the time which wasn’t a good thing either in my book. Oh, and what was with the oversized wrap around glasses the backing band are wearing? Was it meant to represent anonymity, as in ‘No One’. I’m probably overthinking it which I doubt 2 Unlimited did.
It’s the video for “Anytime You Need A Friend” by Mariah Carey next. You may recall that she flew over to appear on the show in person to perform the song the other week. Wikipedia informs me that this was the first promo in which Mariah has straightened hair as opposed to her cascading curls. And the world was never the same again.
Talking of world altering events, an NHS choir called Breathe Harmony recorded a version of the song during the COVID-19 pandemic with contributions from over 100 staff recorded at home on mobile phones that were put together into one video. That film came to the attention of Mariah herself who tweeted that it had brought tears to her eyes (in a good way). The recording was eventually released as a single to raise money for two NHS charities. Mariah’s original peaked at No 8 in the UK.
Finally a D:Ream hit that isn’t a re-release of a previous single. After “Things Can Only Get Better” (once) and “U R The Best Thing” (twice) had been given the re-release treatment to great effect realising No 1 and No 4 hits respectively, here comes “Take Me Away”. However, like its predecessors, it was a track on the band’s debut album “D:Ream On Volume 1”. Truth be told, it’s not a great song and this was reflected in its chart peak of No 18. It probably should gave remained an album track. Peter Cunnah sounds ever so slightly out of breath doing a live vocal here and he’s also not wearing his trademark chequered suit. Maybe the two are related – no suit equals laboured vocals, like Samson and his lack of strength once his hair was cut off.
Professor Brian Cox watch update: That’s not him again is it?
Twice in the same show?! After pulling a fast one to get 2 Unlimited on the show once more, the TOTP producers have done the same again for Toni Braxton. Not content with having been a regular on the show for the whole of 1994, Ric Blaxill and co have come up with a way of squeezing her into the running order despite not having a single that was in the charts at the time. Again like 2 Unlimited before her, “Love Shoulda Brought You Home” would would eventually be released from her album and become a No 33 hit. Unlike 2 Unlimited, the song was actually her debut single release (in the US) back in 1992. It also appeared on the soundtrack to the Eddie Murphy movie Boomerang alongside Boyz II Men’s “End Of The Road”.
As for the performance here, is this the first time Toni has been in the TOTP studio in person? In the past she seems to have done a lot of those live by satellite turns. A more pertinent question though might be why has she been styled to look like Halle Berry in the film version of TheFlintstones?
We do have a live by satellite performance next but as Toni Braxton was over in the UK anyway, the slot has gone to SpinDoctors who are showcasing their song “Cleopatra’s Cat”, the lead single from their sophomore album “Turn It Upside Down”. I don’t wish to be unkind but this was utterly pointless from start to finish. Firstly, the song is dreadful – it sounds like it was worked up out of a noodling jam session and some nonsensical lyrics were overlaid as a guide vocal. Ah yes the lyrics – some meandering bollocks about Roman general Mark Antony not being able to outwit the cat of his girlfriend Cleopatra, the ruler of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC. I’m sure it’s probably a metaphor for something but really, who cares? It was certainly no “Two Princes”.
Secondly, theres the staging of it. How we were meant to get excited about seeing some disheveled hippy types performing on a boat on the East River surrounded by some skyscrapers, I’m not sure. “Cleopatra’s Cat” peaked at No 29 and was their last UK Top 40 hit.
Still with Chaka DemusandPliers? In the Summer of 1994? Fear not though as “I Wanna Be Your Man” would be their penultimate UK Top 40 hit. Yet another track from their “Tease Me” album, this one is nothing to do with the Lennon -McCartney song recorded by both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones but rather is the usual staple we’d come to expect from the duo with Pliers singing about a “sexy lady”and getting the “cherry from the cherry tree” before Chaka Demus blows in like a foghorn with his toasting. He even begins with a “Here me know” – please spare us.
After one final hit with “Gal Wine”, they would try (and fail) to score a further hit in 1996 with a cover of “Every Kinda People” by Robert Palmer talking of whom…
I don’t think Robert Palmer had been on TOTP since he performed his Marvin Gaye mashup hit “Mercy Mercy Me / I Want You” in 1990. The most likely reason for this would be that he hadn’t had any UK Top 40 hits since then and this new single “Girl U Want” would not reverse that trend peaking at No 57. So why was he on the show then?Maybe it was a change of direction brought in by new producer Ric Blaxill where the artist’s name and fame was considered bigger and more important than their chart position? In any case, it fitted in with the unconventionality of this particular show being, as it was, the third song on that wasn’t a current hit single after 2 Unlimited and Toni Braxton.
I didn’t know until now that this was actually a cover of a track by US New Wavers Devo but it is although it’s definitely been given the Palmer treatment. He’s made it sound like a companion piece to his 1988 song “Simply Irresistible” which is no bad thing in my book. Bob looks as suave as ever in this performance though I do wonder if many of the youths in the studio audience had a clue who he was. Tragically, Palmer would be dead in nine years from a heart attack.
Right, how many weeks are we up to for Wet Wet Wet’s version of “Love Is All Around” being at No 1? Three is it? Just another twelve to go after this then! Maybe it’s time to discuss the original recording of the song now. Asked to name any songs by The Troggs, I’d have got “Wild Thing” and “Love Is All Around” and probably nothing else. It turns out though that in addition to those two, they had another six Top 40 hits between 1966 and 1968 including a No 1 (“With A Girl Like You”). After that point, the hits quickly vanished and a reluctance to tour in the US until 1968 meant they failed to consolidate on the success of “Wild Thing” topping the charts over there.
Changes of record label failed to improve the band’s commercial fortunes and even resorting to the extreme option of re-recording “Wild Thing” with Oliver Reed and Alex Higgins failed to make a splash (if you don’t count Reed’s infamous drunken promotional appearance on TheWord). They did, however, earn some credibility points when they recorded an album with REM called “Athens Andover” in the early 90s. The collaboration came about after Michael Stipe and co had covered “Love Is All Around” in concert. Wanna hear it? OK then…
Better than the Wets version? I’ll leave that for you to decide. Troggs lead singer Reg Presley famously spent the royalties from it on researching crop circles and UFOs releasing his findings in a book published in 2002 called Wild ThingsTheyDon’tTellUs.
The play out song this week is another cover version – “Word Up” as done by Gun. Originally a hit for Cameo in 1986 of course, these Scottish rockers recorded it for the lead single of their third album “Swagger” to reactivate a career which had stalled rather since their debut hit “Better Days” in 1989. As we have seen so many times in these TOTP reviews, cover versions are a great way of securing a chart hit when one is needed and so it was with “Word Up” which gave Gun their biggest ever hit when it made No 8. I always quite liked their rock-tastic take on the track but I would have sworn it came out later in the decade than 1994. Five years on, Mel B also had a hit with a cover of “Word Up” taking her version to No 13.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
The Grid
Swamp Thing
No
2
2 Unlimited
No One
As if
3
Mariah Carey
Anytime You Need A Friend
Nah
4
D:Ream
Take Me Away
I did not
5
Toni Braxton
Love Shoulda Brought You Home
Nope
6
Spin Doctors
Cleopatra’s Cat
No chance
7
Chaka Demus and Pliers
I Wanna Be Your Man
Never happening
8
Robert Palmer
Girl U Want
Negative
9
Wet Wet Wet
Love Is All Around
I didn’t
10
Gun
Word Up
Liked it, didn’t buy it
Disclaimer
I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).
All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.
And there go the 1993 TOTP repeats – weren’t they awful?! This particular year was the one I was least looking forward to reviewing so far and my trepidation was justified. Some truly terrible music made the charts topped off with the festive chart topper also being possibly the worst No 1 single of all time. What a time to be alive! So what was all this terrible music of which I write? Well, if I think of the charts of 1993, the first word that comes to mind is ‘Eurodance’ – so many acts seemed to appear this year peddling their synth riffs, drum machines, inanely and insanely catchy choruses and their ‘featured’ rappers. The likes of 2 Unlimited, Culture Beat and Haddaway all scored massive hits during the twelve calendar months with the first two even bagging themselves a No 1 record. The second thought that enters my head when considering this year is the spectre of the ‘Three S’s’ – Shaggy, Shabba and Snow. They each racked up a ginormous smash, specifically “Oh Carolina” (No 1), “Mr Loverman” (No 2) and “Informer” (No 2) all within a few weeks of each other. And they were all shite. As I said, what a time to be alive. Singles sales in general were up after the slump of the previous year but the standard of No 1s was as poor as ever. Look at this lot…
It’s grim reading. Seventeen chart toppers by sixteen artists (Mr Blobby was No 1 on two occasions) and I bought none of them. I would break them down as follows:
3 x Eurodance nonsense (2 Unlimited, Culture Beat, Ace Of Base)
3 x teen sensations (Take That)
2 x 80s songs reactivated by (i) TV advert (The Bluebells) and (ii) record company fleecing an artist’s back catalogue posthumously (Freddie Mercury)
1 x EP taken from the tribute concert for said deceased artist (George Michael & Queen with Lisa Stansfield)
1 x execrable novelty hit (Mr Blobby)
1 x last year’s Christmas No 1 hung over into the new year (Whitney Houston)
1 x out of the blue monster hit by hoary old rocker (Meatloaf)
1 x lame reggae flavoured cover for a film soundtrack by a band that owed their biggest hits to lame reggae flavoured covers (UB40)
1 x soul/dance floor filler by a new artist (Gabrielle)
1 x hip-hop shout-a-long anthem from an artist better known as a TV star at the time (DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
1 x reggae hit from a new artist jumping on the dancehall/toasting bandwagon of 1993 (Shaggy)
It’s not the most inspiring collection of songs ever. Where was the innovation? Was this really what the kids wanted? It wasn’t any better if you looked at the biggest selling albums of the year. The Top 10 included the usual mainstream names like Phil Collins, Bryan Adams, Diana Ross, UB40, U2 plus the resurrected Meatloaf who easily helped himself to both the year’s best selling single and album. The only real surprises were the performances of the No 2 and No 3 albums. The former came from REM who achieved that position with a record that was released in the October of the previous year. Meanwhile, the latter came from the only ‘new’ artist in the Top 10 in Dina Carroll whose success was no doubt enabled by the presence of six hit singles on her album. It doesn’t get much better if you scroll down the chart where you’ll find the familiar names of Sting, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Michael Bolton, Rod Stewart and Tina Turner. However, honourable mentions should go to Spin Doctors, Stereo MCs and Björk.
Hits We Missed
Despite there being very few shows in 1993 that weren’t rebroadcast by BBC4 due to presenter issues – I think we may have missed the episode with Rolf Harris performing “Stairway To Heaven” understandably – there were still a few Top 40 hits that didn’t make it onto TOTP. Yes, even though the infernal Breakers section with its five or so songs crammed into a two minute slot was a constant throughout the year, somehow there were still some singles we never got to see. Here are my picks…
Sugar – “If I Can’t Change Your Mind”
I used to work with someone who loved Bob Mould and his post Hüsker Dü project and you can hear why on this, Sugar’s only UK chart hit. Leaving behind his previous band’s punk tendencies for some perfect power pop, this should have been huge. If you need validation of this opinion then check out the comments against it on YouTube where the most used word to describe the song/artist is ‘underrated’.
The parent album “Copper Blue” was well received by the critics both at the time (it was the NME album of the year) and beyond (it features in the 1001AlbumsYouMustHearBeforeYouDie reference book). It wasn’t just the critics who liked it as it did sell well making the Top 10 in the UK so why didn’t this single get a chance on TOTP? Bob Mould broke up Sugar in 1996 though he did tour “Copper Blue” just as himself in 2012.
Released: Jan ‘93
Chartpeak: No 30
Radiohead – “Anyone Can Play Guitar”
Asked to name Radiohead’s first hit, I’m guessing many would answer “Creep” but although it was their first single release, “Anyone Can Play Guitar” was actually their first foray into the Top 40. You could forgive the error though. One week at No 32, one week at No 50 and then gone. No wonder we didn’t get to see this one on TOTP. It was an inauspicious chart start for a band that would become a behemoth of the 90s and beyond.
Listening back to it now, it must have seemed at odds with its chart contemporaries. It’s all feedback and distortion in the opening before that’s zapped and the now familiar Radiohead staccato rhythm kicks in. The chorus actually has a strong, almost joyful (for them) melody which plays directly against the entrenched, downbeat nature of the verses. I must admit that it passed me by at the time before we were all swallowed up by that enormous sound of “Creep”. Fast forward two years and the band upped their game with the epic “The Bends” album and I for one couldn’t resist them any longer. So, “Anyone Can Play Guitar” – if nothing else, a great Pointless answer if the category of Radiohead Top 40 hits ever comes up.
Released:Feb ’93
Chartpeak:No 32
Neil Young – “Harvest Moon”
I have to admit that my knowledge of Neil Young in 1993 could never be described as extensive – in fact it’s as limited as the amount of copies that exist of the A&M pressing of “God Save The Queen”. Obviously I knew his only UK hit single to that point (1971’s “Heart Of Gold”) and that it came from an album called “Harvest” but beyond that? Hardly anything. I was aware of a handful of his songs from cover versions by other artists like “The Needle And The Damage Done” via a cover version by The Icicle Works and Pete Wylie from 1986 and “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” by Saint Etienne in 1991. Oh and The Alarm covered “Rockin’ In The Free World” on their early 90s album “Raw”. Yes, I knew about his involvement in Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young but all I really knew of their catalogue was “Our House” (I’ve since discovered a few more of their wonderful harmonies). It’s not much to say that Young has recorded forty-five studio albums over the course of his career. I think the fact that he released an album of feedback (1991’s “Arc”) didn’t help to pique my curiosity.
In 1993 came “Harvest Moon” though and I recall there being a lot of fuss in the music press about its release. Seen as a follow up to “Harvest” twenty years on, it would be his biggest selling album since the original. However the title track didn’t achieve the same level of success when issued as a single despite being critically lauded. It seems to me that it borrows the guitar motif from “Walk Right Back” by The Everly Brothers (albeit a slowed down version) but that’s not a criticism. It’s a gorgeous melody and judging by the comments against the video for it on YouTube, it certainly means a lot to people. Entry after entry talks about how it is the song that reminds the author of a departed loved one. The power of music isn’t always measured by chart positions.
Released:Feb ’93
Chartpeak:No 36
Duran Duran – “Too Much Information”
1993 was a year of rejuvenation for a few names from the past. The Bluebells had a TV advert inspired No 1 with a single from 1984, Nick Heyward would return with his first new album for five years (more of that later) whilst Go West somehow managed to bag themselves three Top 40 hits. And then there was Duran Duran. Seemingly destined to be locked away with the other unwanted 80s artefacts in the pop music broom cupboard as the new decade dawned, they completed a remarkable commercial comeback in this year.
After the very poorly received “Liberty” album in 1990, many thought we had seen the last of Duran Duran. However, the doubters hadn’t banked on the band’s seventh eponymously titled studio album (aka ‘The Wedding Album’). Led by the outstanding and enduring single “Ordinary World”, it went Top 5 in the UK and Top 10 in the US becoming their highest charting album in a decade since “Seven And The Ragged Tiger” at the height of their pomp. Another accomplished single followed in “Come Undone” but there was a third, largely forgotten single that appeared in August.
“Too Much Information” was the opening track on the album and it’s a belter. Starting off with an acoustic guitar intro, it suddenly bounds into life with a punchy groove that never quits over the next four minutes or so. Reversing the traditional single release template of two uptempo tunes and then a slow track, this was quite the change of pace after “Ordinary World” and “Come Undone”. Often seen as a prediction of the information highway which was in its infancy, the lyrics also show some self knowledge with lines like “Destroyed by MTV, I hate to bite the hand that feeds me” referencing the role that the music channel played in breaking the band in America. There’s also some tongue in cheek admittance of the turbulent past of the band with the lyric “This band is perfect, just don’t scratch the surface”.
The Julian Temple directed video does a great job of depicting sensory overload with multiple cuts coming thick and fast – there’s even a homage to the infamous eye clamps scene from AClockworkOrange. None of this made any difference to the single’s chart fortunes though and it barely scraped into the Top 40. Would a Breaker slot on TOTP have made any difference? Maybe. The success and favourable sway of public opinion the band received in 1993 quickly evaporated when they released their collection of covers “Thank You” two years later which was declared the worst album of all time by QMagazine in 2006.
Released:Sep ’93
Chartpeak:No 35
Squeeze – “Third Rail”
As comebacks go, this next band’s reappearance in the charts wasn’t as successful as Duran Duran’s but was easily as welcome. Squeeze had gone a whole six years without a Top 40 entry before “Third Rail” became their first (just!) since “Hourglass” in 1987. In that time they’d released two albums neither of which had pulled up any trees commercially although a 1992 Greatest Hits had returned then to the Top 10 of the album charts.
However, 1993 saw a renaissance of sorts. “Some Fantastic Place” achieved a No 26 peak and was quite the sleeper hit selling steadily under the radar. The album featured the return (briefly) of Paul Carrack who had been with the band on 1981’s “East Side Story” and also Elvis Costello drummer Pete Thomas who replaced long term sticks man Gilson Lavis.
The title track was released as the second single from it and is a superlative piece of work. Like “Harvest Moon” earlier, it resonates with people who have lost loved ones – it was written about the death of a long time friend of the band who introduced Chris Difford and Glen Tilbrook in the 70s – with both men claiming it to be their favourite Squeeze song. I could have included it in the HitsThatNeverWere section below but I’ve gone with “Third Rail”. Starting with a startling, descending guitar riff, it then goes into a backbeat borrowed from the old Rhythm and Blues stomper “Some Other Guy” before the typically catchy chorus hooks you in. Unbelievably, Squeeze have only ever had three Top 10 hits with the last of those coming in 1981. There really isn’t any justice in the world.
Released: July ‘93
ChartPeak: No39
Hits That Never Were
My favourite part of these yearly overviews is rediscovering those songs that I believed should have been huge chart hits but somehow failed to pierce the Top 40. Here are my selection for 1993…
Freaky Realistic – “Leonard Nimoy”
One of the greatest lost gems of the decade came from Peckham but unlike its most famous fictional resident Del Boy, hardly anyone seemed to promote their claims to superstardom by declaring “you know it makes sense”. By rights, Freaky Realistic should have been saying to themselves “This time next year, we’ll be millionaires!” off the back of their one and only album “Frealism” but as ever, the UK record buying public thought they knew better (they didn’t) and almost totally ignored them. Not my wife though who bought the album and introduced me to its delights. Fusing some gorgeous pop melodies with dance beats, it should have been an iconic title of the genre alongside the likes of The Beloved and even Primal Scream (no, really – it’s that good). Somehow though, not even a super low retail price (promoted as a ‘freaky price’) of £5 could entice enough punters to explore its charms.
Three singles were released from it and I could have plumped for any of them to highlight but in the end I chose the Star Trek referencing “Leonard Nimoy” which was as catchy as hell and yet kooky in a playful way with its choice of subject matter. Unfortunately, it didn’t live long and prosper in the charts spending just one week at No 71 being unable to…ahem…’cling on’ to any higher placing.
Internal feuding broke the band up and a planned second album never materialised despite a batch of new songs being demoed. “Frealism” was unavailable for many years but reissue specialist label Cherry Red rereleased it in 2010. Get yourself a copy, you won’t regret it.
Released:July ’93
Chart peak: No 71
Ian McNabb – “If Love Was Like Guitars”
Throughout these reviews, especially in the 80s years, one of the artists that I have included most in this section have been The Icicle Works. Great single after great single was routinely ignored by the record buying public until the band could take no more and disbanded in 1990.
By 1993, Ian McNabb had formulated his first solo album “Truth And Beauty” (he’s added another ten in the intervening thirty years) and guess what? Hardly anybody bought that either! I did my best for Ian’s fortunes by purchasing it though and it’s a great little collection of well crafted songs as you would expect from such an accomplished songwriter. “If Love Was Like Guitars” wasn’t, as I incorrectly remembered, the lead single (at least not technically) though my mistake was forgivable. McNabb had released two singles in 1991 which both ended up on the album but given that was two years prior and they did absolutely nothing, no wonder my mind has settled on “If Love Was Like Guitars” as the main promotional track for “Truth And Beauty”. And what a track! A trippy, swirling, psychedelic Beatles-esque verse leads into a huge, chunky guitar chorus with sing-a-long lyrics before the obligatory but perfectly placed key change and wah-wah guitars take us home. Why oh why did this not become a huge hit?
The following year, Ian released the Mercury Music Prize nominated “Head Like A Rock” album with Crazy Horse of the aforementioned Neil Young fame. I saw him live on that tour and he was great. In fact, I’ve seen Ian maybe four or five times live and he can still knock it out of the park. A starry blue eyed wonder indeed.
Released: January ‘93
Chart peak: No 67
The Lemon Trees – “Child Of Love”
You wait all decade (so far) for a lost gem and then two turn up in the same year. After Freaky Realistic earlier, here’s another lost treasure of 1993. The Lemon Trees (not to be confused with The Lemonheads nor indeed the song “Lemon Tree” by the German band Fool’s Garden) were so much more than just the original band of Guy Chambers who would find fame and fortune for his songwriting collaborations with Robbie Williams. This 60s influenced five piece were interested in real instruments and life affirming melodies and they brought all that to the table on their only album “Open Book” which I duly bought. Every track on it is a winner including all five singles taken from it none of which hit higher than No 52 in the charts. They operated a spirit of true egalitarianism with those five singles being sung by three different band members.
“Child Of Love” was the fourth of those and I was convinced it would be the one to be the band’s breakthrough hit. It has a lovely, lilting, Summertime feel to it with a Stevie Wonder sounding harmonica break towards the end (although the singer Alex Lewis plays a melodica in the video). Why did it fail? Not enough promotion? I’m pretty sure it was on ITV’s ChartShow but maybe record company MCA didn’t have enough faith in their charges after three misses on the trot? Whatever the reason, it never quite happened for The Lemon Trees. A fifth single – the excellent “I Can’t Face The World” – came close but that was not enough to prevent a second album remaining unreleased and gathering dust in the MCA vaults. To add to the crime, you can’t even access their first album easily as it’s not on Spotify. Sort it out somebody!
The various members of the band stayed in music mostly. Brothers Paul and Jeremy Stacey have worked with the likes of Sheryl Crow, The Black Crowes and The Finn Brothers. As for the aforementioned Guy Chambers, although mostly known for writing many of Robbie Williams’ biggest hits, his list of other artists he’s worked with is as long as two arms including Melanie C, Beverley Knight, Rufus Wainwright and Miles Kane as well as writing music for the RSC and finally getting round to releasing his own piano album in 2019. As of 2005, Paul Holman was running a record shop in Dorset which is staying in music I guess.
Released:April ’93
Chart peak:No 55
Eskimos And Egypt – “Fall From Grace”
I’ve included this one as I knew the girlfriend of one of the band members and consequently met him a couple of times. Hailing from Manchester (where I was living), Eskimos And Egypt were a hybrid of dance beats and real instruments, kind of like a cross between The Shamen and The Prodigy. They were signed to One Little Indian, the label that was also home to Björk. As she was enjoying a year of mainstream breakthrough success, presumably Eskimos And Egypt held high hopes that they would follow a similar course. Despite TV appearances like this one on TheWord, they weren’t able to crossover into the Top 40.
Like The Lemon Trees earlier, most of the members remained in the music business after the band split moving into production and working with the likes of Sonique, Erasure and t.A.T.u. They even wrote and produced a hit for Rednex of “Cotton Eye Joe” fame called “The Spirit Of The Hawk”. Hmm. As I recall, the guy from the band I met was called Mark and was a big Bolton Wanderers fan who liked to talk about a goal he’d seen cult hero Frank Worthington score for them. Not the famous one against Ipswich where he has his back to goal and flips it over his head before volleying home but one not recorded by the cameras where he supposedly did keepy uppy all the way from the halfway line before scoring. In the snow. Or something.
Released:April ’93
Chart peak:No 51
Betty Boo – “Hangover”
There was so much more to Betty Boo than those catchy, space cadet, start of the 90s hits “Doin’ The Do” and “Where Are You Baby?”. For a start there’s that stuff-of-legend meeting and impromptu performance for Public Enemy in the Shepherd’s Bush MacDonalds as part of She Rockers. Then there’s the pop duo WigWam she formed with Alex James of Blur and her career as a songwriter penning tracks for Girls Aloud, Dannii Minogue, Sophie Ellis-Bextor and of course the Ivor Novello winning “Pure And Simple” for Hear’Say. What most people don’t talk about though is her sophomore album “GRRR!It’sBettyBoo”. Madonna was such a fan of the album that she offered Betty to sign with her own Maverick Records label but she turned down the opportunity – the timing wasn’t right as she was committed to caring for her terminally ill mother.
That second album was a commercial failure peaking at No 62 (by comparison her debut “Boomania” went Top 5 achieving platinum sales) but it did have some decent singles on it. The lead one, “Let Me Take You There”, was even a hit making it to No 12 but it would prove to be Betty’s last. The two follow ups couldn’t breach the Top 40 – “I’m On My Way” peaked at No 44 whilst this one, “Hangover” did even worse. And yet it’s a great pop song, a catchy melody cleverly combined with a Country & Western slide guitar twang and Betty’s trademark rap in the middle eight – what’s not to like? Even the video-in-a-video promo is nicely pitched. Bloody record buying public strikes again.
Released:April ’93
Chart peak:No 50
Luke Goss And The Band Of Thieves – “Sweeter Than The Midnight Rain”
A surprising but deserved entry I think. After making the decision in 1992 that he couldn’t continue with Bros, Luke Goss was left with no record deal and no income but a desire to be honest about who he was. To that end, he wrote his autobiography entitled IOweYouNothing which was well received and formed a band to perform the music that he wanted to play. Not wanting to do a pale imitation of his former glories, he changed musical direction completely for “Sweeter Than The Midnight Rain”. In an interview with Philip Schofield on the last ever GoingLive, Goss described his new sound as being a bit Lenny Kravitz-y, his voice as gravelly and that it was basically “slamming”. He was kind of right as well, especially about his voice. The song begins with an almost wah-wah guitar before Luke comes in doing his best John Mellencamp impression. It was pretty much as far removed from “When Will I Be Famous” as it was possible to be and I, for one, admired that. It’s not a bad tune to boot. Luke also went for a new look to go with his new sound though the long hair isn’t convincing and he’s completely bald these days.
There was meant to be an album (six tracks had already been laid down) but the only material that appeared was a second single called “Give Me One More Chance” but the public didn’t and it failed to chart and Luke turned his back on music to chance his arm as an actor which he has made a decent fist of. Bros were back in the spotlight in 2018 after that documentary aired but I don’t remember any mention of Luke’s solo career in amongst his brother Matt’s laughable one liners. Maybe it wasn’t such a joke after all.
One of the most exciting musical moments of 1993 for me was the return of this man. Despite being one of the most underrated UK songwriters ever (in my humble opinion), we hadn’t seen nor heard from Nick Heyward in nearly five years. Having realised a remarkable transformation in just a few weeks from pin up lead singer of Haircut 100 into mature solo artist with the beyond accomplished 1983 album “North Of A Miracle”, Nick’s commercial fortunes had declined sharply by the end of the 80s. Second and third solo albums “Postcards From Home” and “I Love You Avenue” had both disappeared without trace and Nick entered the 90s so lacking in confidence that he turned down the offer to become the vocalist of Electronic who turned their attention to Neil Tennant. Suddenly though, he was back with a new record label in Epic and a first album since 1988. “From Monday To Sunday” was not a big seller but it was well received critically and crucially announced Heyward as being back as a functioning recording artist. It also showed that his pop instincts (that had always been spot on) were still ahead of the curve, predating Britpop’s channeling of The Beatles by two years.
Lead single “Kite” is a deceptively wonderful track. On first hearing, I didn’t quite get it but it’s a work of genius which is Heyward’s greatest achievement for many. XTC flavoured with autobiographical lyrics that seem to describe his experience of flying high in his early days of fame before getting a case of vertigo, it’s a real winner. Oh, and is that trumpet sound (“The afternoon came, trumpets played”) pinched off “Fantastic Day”? The single not only led Nick’s revival at home but was a surprise hit on US college radio (otherwise rather bizarrely known as Billboard’s Hot Modern Tracks Chart). This gave him the impetus to tour America with the likes of Therapy?, Evan Dando, Teenage Fanclub and almost unbelievably Tony Bennett. I think he toured with Squeeze in the UK (who were presumably promoting the aforementioned “Some Fantastic Place” album) but I couldn’t get tickets for their show at the Manchester Apollo.
Nick would release a further two albums during the 90s with the second of the two released on that most Britpop of labels Creation. Nick was now one of the Godfathers of the movement! Despite being one of the busiest live performers around, it would be another twenty years before his next proper studio album, the magnificent “Woodland Echoes”.
Released:August ’93
Chart peak:No 44
REM – “Find The River”
This is quite the 90s rarity – an REM single that didn’t make the Top 40. Out of twenty-three that they released during the decade, this was the only one that failed to chart. On the one hand that’s understandable as it was the sixth single released from the “Automatic For The People” album that had been out for fourteen months by this point. On the other, this was absolute nonsense, a travesty and a stinging indictment of the UK record buying public’s poor judgment.
“Find The River” is a beautiful song and easily my favourite track from the album which is quite the accolade given the quality of the rest of the songs on it. It’s wistful, meandering, achingly beautiful and for some reason always reminds me of Christmas, probably because of its very late November release date – it’s certainly on my festive playlist anyway. Maybe that release date was part of the reason it wasn’t a hit in that it got caught up in the Christmas rush? I’m not sure how you can explain away it getting no further than No 54 whilst Mr Blobby was No 1 though.
REM would return just nine months later with “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?”, the lead single from their “Monster” album which would become their third biggest UK hit at the time when it peaked at No 9.
Released: Dec ‘93
Chartpeak: No54
Their Season In The Sun
4 Non Blondes
One of those artists whose hit became bigger than them in the same vein as “Take My Breath Away” by Berlin and “(I Just) Died In Your Arms” by Cutting Crew. Unlike these other two acts though, 4 Non Blondes were genuine one hit wonders. “What’s Up” made No 2 in the UK charts in the Summer of 1993 and then…nothing. Or not quite nothing as parent album “Bigger, Better, Faster, More!” was also a success (presumably off the back of the single) but who knows anyone who has it…except me. I didn’t buy it. I found a copy down the back of a filing cabinet when shutting down the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester. All the stock had been boxed up and shipped out by that point so I kept it. I never played it once.
Dina Carroll
Never mind WhatHappenedToBabyJane (the film not the Rod Stewart song), whatever happened to Dina Carroll. One of the undoubted breakthrough stars of 1993, she promptly disappeared for three years before returning with a sophomore album that sold well but which nobody remembers. That’s because her back catalogue is dominated by her debut album “So Close” and its attendant six hit singles especially the final one “Don’t Be A Stranger”. Reading between the lines, I wonder if Dina just didn’t fancy this whole business of being a star and all its trappings. She took some time off after 1993 due to feeling ‘burnt out’. Maybe that was a big indicator. A shame because she had demonstrated her diversity of sound ably with the “So Close” album. Hopefully, unlike Bette Davis’s character ‘Baby Jane’ Hudson, Dina’s not bitter about it all.
Haddaway
…and shite!
Joey Lawrence
US teen actor who made the leap into pop stardom albeit briefly. He was kind of like a 90s Leif Garrett. With just two middling UK hits to his name, he disappeared pretty quickly. All I really remember about him is that his singles came with a free fold out poster, never a good sign of musical ability. In his defence, he returned to acting and eked out a fairly successful career.
Shabba Ranks
Surely one of the biggest wankers of the decade, the stench of Ranks’ revolting homophobic views still permeates his public image. That and being responsible for one of the stupidest and most ridiculed shout outs ever committed to record. ‘Shabba!’? Tosser more like.
Snow
Canadian rapper who spent seven consecutive weeks on top of the US charts with his single “Informer” (it made No 2 over here). This dreadful track featured the phrase ‘A licky boom-boom down’ repeatedly and told the story of Snow (presumably) being arrested and taken to a police station ‘where they whipped down my pants and looked up my bottom’. The censors didn’t get involved though as Snow’s rapping skills were so poor nobody could understand a word of what he was banging on about. Needless to say, he never had another hit single in this country.
Spin Doctors
And a third ‘S’ artist but not the final member of the unholy trinity that was Shabba, Snow and Shaggy. In fairness to Shaggy, he continued to have big hits well beyond this year. Spin Doctors on the other hand will always be remembered for 1993 and “Two Princes”, a fabulously groovy tune no doubt but which, much like 4 Non Blondes, was more memorable than the band themselves.
No Christmas Show Review?
Nope. There’s nothing on it we haven’t seen before and it goes on for ages. I’m not doing that Smashie and Nicey 30 years retrospective either.
Last Words
So, 1993 – the worst year of the decade for chart music? It must be up there though I fear that there may be some equally awful moments lurking in the late 90s. For me personally it was a year of great change. I worked in three separate Our Price stores over the course of the twelve months and with lots of different people. The moves didn’t stop in 1994 either but that’s for future posts. I don’t recall buying that much music from this year despite my staff discount which either means most of it was shite (or at least didn’t tally with my personal tastes) or I was skint most of the time. Or a bit of both. 1994 must be better mustn’t it? Fancy joining me to find out?
Disclaimer
I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).
All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree
When Robbie Coltrane died recently, like many people, it got me thinking about his acting credits and the roles on which he made his name. Although I’ve seen many of the Harry Potter films due to my son’s influence, it won’t be Hagrid that I remember him for. Not when there’s so many other turns that I could reflect on. There’s his memorable performance as Dr Johnson, creator of A Dictionary of the English Language in Blackadder TheThird for starters. Then there’s his starring role in the critically acclaimed National Treasure from 2016.
However for me, he was never better than in Cracker which first aired on ITV three days before this TOTP was broadcast. Based around the immensely complex character of criminal psychiatrist Dr Edward ‘Fitz’ Fitzgerald, it ran for three series from 1993 to 1995 plus a couple of later specials in 1996 and 2006. Whilst its plots were incredibly engrossing (the Hillsborough story is the one I remember the most), there was another source of interest for me in that it was set and filmed in Manchester where I was living at the time. I think they even filmed in the area I lived called Longsight. I certainly recall walking home up my road one night and stumbling upon a whole film crew filming outside a house with many actors / extras dressed as police. I wasn’t the only person who was given a shock that night. The local drug dealer (‘Mr Dodgy’ we called him) nearly shat himself when confronted with the scene.
Talking of scares, here’s “Big Scary Animal” by Belinda Carlisle to open the show. This is the third time in consecutive weeks that this track has been featured but despite all that exposure, it couldn’t break into the Top 10 peaking just outside at No 12. Belinda’s discography tells me that she has more Greatest Hits albums to her name than studio albums which would suggest that she was all about the singles but that argument doesn’t quite stack up when you crunch her numbers. Discounting her solo debut “Belinda”, the following four albums all went Top 10 in the UK with two of them achieving platinum sales status. And yet…have you ever met somebody who owns a Belinda Carlisle studio album?
How do you follow up one of the biggest selling songs of the year which also happens to be your debut single? This was the dilemma facing Gabrielle who had shot to fame off the back of her No 1 “Dreams”. Talk about setting a high bar for yourself. Sadly and perhaps inevitably, “Going Nowhere” failed to live up to expectations. Not exactly a prophetic song title as it did make the Top 10 but it didn’t have that mercurial bit of magic that “Dreams” had courtesy of that adapted Tracy Chapman sample. It sounds like something Aretha Franklin might have recorded in the 80s. A very clunky, dated sound in a dance obsessed 1993.
Two further singles were released from her debut album “Find Your Way” and they did the opposite of that instruction by getting lost in the lower reaches of the charts, neither even making the Top 20. Was Gabrielle’s pop star career in danger of petering out? Perhaps against the odds, she would turn her fortunes around gradually over the course of the decade before peaking again triumphantly with a definitely prophetically titled song, the No 1 single “Rise” in 2000.
What’s going on here then? The pop phenomenon (and they really were) of 1984 back in the charts in 1993? Well of course it was all about record company plundering of an artist’s back catalogue to squeeze some more revenue out of their reputation. Frankie GoesToHollywood were unavoidable in 1984. They owned the charts with three No1 records totting up fifteen weeks at the top between them. They became one of a handful of artists to command the No1 and No2 chart positions in the same week and were surrounded by controversy after the BBC banned the first of those No1 singles “Relax” due to its overtly sexual nature (Mike Read and all that). After the success came the downfall and the gap of two years between debut album “Welcome To The Pleasuredome” and follow up “Liverpool” proved insurmountable in terms of maintaining their profile and the band split in 1987 after basically imploding.
This though was all ancient history in pop terms and by 1993 record label ZTT calculated that the nine years between Frankie’s annus mirabilis and a revisiting of their story was long enough. To try and entice a new fanbase or indeed reactivate their existing one towards their amazing story once more, they released “Bang!…The Greatest Hits Of Frankie Goes To Hollywood” – it did what it said on the tin. Like Belinda Carlisle earlier, Frankie have far more compilations than studio albums to their name (a ratio of 10:2) but this one was by far the most successful going to No 4 in the charts and achieving gold status sales. To promote the album, a version of “Relax” was re-issued – the “Classic 1993 Version” to be exact – though I’m not entirely sure how different it was from the original which already had a myriad of mixes anyway.
There’s no controversy this time around with videos as the BBC is showing a live performance promo of the song directed by David Mallet. Even nearly ten years on, the notorious and banned S&M video with an obese Roman emperor and drag queens was never going to be shown before the watershed. The 1993 rerelease of “Relax” peaked at No5. Quite remarkable.
This next one is just a brilliant song in my book and a highlight from a great album that doesn’t get the praise it deserves. “Roses In The Hospital” was the third single from “Gold Against The Soul” by ManicStreetPreachers and regularly trades positions in my mind with “Life Becoming A Landslide” (the follow up single) as the best track on the album.
Borrowing just ever so slightly from Bowie’s “Sound And Vision” (or is it “Sorrow”?), it’s got an unexpectedly funky backbeat allied with the hookiest (yes, that’s a word!) of choruses. Add in a wonderful coda that combines a refrain of the phrase “forever delayed”* with a knowing nod to The Clash’s “Rudie Can’t Fail” and it couldn’t…well…fail. It didn’t either when becoming the biggest hit from the album by peaking at No 15. This was the highest chart positions of any of their own compositions at the time with 1992’s No 7 “Theme From M.A.S.H (Suicide Is Painless)” obviously a cover version.
I was working in the Our Price in Stockport around this time and there were actually two Our Prices in the town, the big one on Merseyway and a much smaller one just around the corner from it. That store had a reputation for stocking classical music and I believe actually employed a ‘mature’ lady (compared to all us youngsters working for the company anyway) for a few hours a week who had great classical product knowledge. I was covering in the smaller store on the morning “Roses In The Hospital” came out and for some reason Sony sent us one 7” single despite the fact that the store didn’t stock any vinyl. Why do I remember this non-consequential crap? Oh and apparently that isn’t Nicky Wire in the Minnie Mouse mask as he was on honeymoon so his place was taken by a roadie in disguise. He wasn’t making some anti-Disney statement. Didn’t Echo and the Bunnymen do something similar when performing “Seven Seas” on the show in 1984 with a guy in a fish costume standing in for an absent Les Pattinson?
* “Forever Delayed” would be the title of the band’s first Best Of album in 2002 though curiously “Roses In The Hospital” was not included on the track listing. It did appear on the DVD version of the album and 2011 retrospective “National Treasures -The Complete Singles”.
Just the two Breakers this week starting with an act that always confuses me for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I always get US3 confused with the similarly named Oui 3 who were having hits around this time. Secondly, like fellow jazz rapper Guru who was also on the show as a Breaker recently, they had an album that I remember selling loads of in Our Price but which Wikipedia tells me was not a massive commercial success. In the case of Guru that was the album “Guru’s Jazzmatazz Vol. 1” which only made No 58 in the charts whilst US3’s was “Hand On The Torch” which topped out at No 40.
“Cantaloop (FlipFantasia)” was the biggest hit from the album though it took a re-release to achieve this peak of No 23 after it bombed initially the year before. Sampling Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island”, I quite liked this though it wasn’t really my bag.
After Frankie Goes To Hollywood earlier, here’s another huge star of the 80s. Unlike Frankie though, Paul Young had managed to eke out some chart hits after his imperial phase of 83-85 had petered out and remain a semi regular visitor to the charts. In the 90s up to this point he had scored a total of four Top 40 entries (including No 4 hit “Senza Una Donna (Without A Woman)” with Zucchero). Just like Frankie though, he had also released a big selling Greatest Hits compilation called “From Time To Time – The Singles Collection” which had even topped the charts in 1991*.
However, Paul’s studio albums had suffered from a case of diminishing returns for a while with each one selling less than its predecessor right back to his debut “No Parlez” in 1983. By the time we got to 1993’s “The Crossing”, he was beyond the point of no return when it came to reversing that trend with it peaking at a lowly No 27. The lead single from it was a song that suggested that Paul (or his songwriters) had taken a leaf out of the ABC book of composition but instead of Smokey singing, we had Otis Redding feeling sad. I speak as a person who owns some Paul Young records and I have to say that “NowIKnowWhat Made OtisBlue” is not his finest hour. However, it is deceptively catchy and has some powerful ear worm potential. Maybe that’s why it made an impressive chart high of No 14. Paul would visit the UK Top 40 only twice more and in a very reduced way but he remains a big draw on the live circuit.
*As with Belinda Carlisle before him, Paul has more Best Of compilations to his name than actual studio albums.
The debut now of a group who would enjoy enormous and sustained success throughout the decade despite losing a popular member Robbie Williams / Take That style. The presence in the UK charts of all female American R&B groups like En Vogue, SWV and Jade had highlighted a gap in the market for a UK version. In all honesty, apart from Bananarama, we hadn’t had many girl bands of any musical persuasion at all. Up to 1993, who else was there? Toto Coelo? Belle And The Devotions? The Reynolds Girls? The Beverley Sisters? We were seriously lagging behind. Enter Eternal – sisters Easther and Vernie Bennett and friends Kéllé Bryan and Louise Nurding. Put together by First Avenue Records using the En Vogue template, they exploded out of the gate with debut single “Stay” which made No 4 confirming consumer appetite for such a band.
Underpinning that success was the confidence of their performance here. Easther gives a strong lead vocal while the synchronised dance moves behind her are absolutely on point including some Egyptian style head slides and eye catching arm waving. Talking of eye catching, perhaps predictably, Louise Nurding got a lot of attention as the only non-black person in the group and within two years she would leave the band to pursue her own successful solo career. Had EMI always got her flagged for such a move? There was a rumour that they didn’t think they could break the band in the US as an R&B act if they had someone white in the line-up but I don’t want to pursue that particular line of thought. Suffice to say both Eternal and Louise were able to co-exist and have plenty of chart hits. The former had eight UK Top 10 hits including a No 1 post Louise who herself racked up an impressive twelve Top 20 hits half of which went Top 5. The one album they recorded as a four piece – “Always And Forever” – went four times platinum in the UK and sold four million copies worldwide paving the way for many an all female band in their wake including Spice Girls, All Saints, Girls Aloud and The Saturdays.
Host Mark Franklin informs us that Chaka DemusAndPliers were meant to be in the TOTP studio to perform “She Don’t Let Nobody” but the former wasn’t very well and they had to cancel. He probably had a sore throat having strained it doing all those ‘Baby Girl’ and ‘Number One in the World’ shout outs. Ho hum.
This next one is a curious thing. Not the performance itself which is pretty standard but the fact that it was the band’s one and only time in the TOTP studio and it was for a single that only made it to No 40 in our charts. Can’t be that many acts that have such a TOTP history. Of course, the videos for SpinDoctors previous hit singles “Two Princes” and “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” had been on the show before but this run through of “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues” was the band’s only live performance.
The third single taken from their “Pocketful Of Kryptonite” album, it was very much in the same vein as its predecessors (no shaking things up with a slushy ballad for these guys) but a much more washed out, half-hearted version. Maybe that explains its lowly chart placing. Jimmy Olsen was of course Superman’s nerdy pal who had his own DC Comic but I’d take Fitz from Cracker to solve a case over Jimmy every time.
DJJazzyJeff&TheFreshPrince still reign supreme at No 1 with “Boom! Shake The Room”. The pair seemed to have an issues with buildings – their debut album was called “Rock The House”. Yeah, you guessed it. I’ve got nothing left to say about this one. Thankfully this is its last week at No 1 as the Take That juggernaut is coming…
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Belinda Carlisle
Big Scary Animal
Nope
2
Gabrielle
Going Nowhere
No
3
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Relax
Not in 1993 but I did back in 1984 obviously
4
Manic Street Preachers
Roses In The Hospital
Not the single but I bought the album
5
US3
Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)
Didn’t mind it, didn’t buy it
6
Paul Young
Now I Know What Made Otis Blue
Nah
7
Eternal
Stay
I did not
8
Chaka Demus And Pliers
She Don’t Let Nobody
Certainly not
9
Spin Doctors
Jimmy Olsen’s Blues”
Negative
10
DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
Boom! Shake The Room
And no
Disclaimer
I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).
All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.
If it’s mid August then it must be the start of the new football season and 1993 was no different. I didn’t have high hopes for my beloved Chelsea for the 1993/94 season after the previous year’s bucketload of mid table mediocrity but on the day this TOTP aired, we signed Gavin Peacock for 1.2 million from Newcastle United which I was excited about. Gavin would prove to be an instant hit by scoring on his debut two days later. However, Chelsea lost the game and it would prove to be another season of highs and lows characterised by our getting to the FA Cup final for the first time in 24 years and then losing it 0-4. Crushing. I wonder how many highs and lows there’ll be in this TOTP?
We start with a massive low. What the Barney Rubble was going on here?! I thought we might have managed to get away with just a short glimpse of GreenJellÿ when they appeared in the Breakers with their first and biggest hit “Three Little Pigs”. No such luck as they have made themselves available to open this show with their new single “Anarchy In The UK”. Their take on the Sex Pistols’ punk classic is, as my friend Robin would say, like pissing from the roof of a multi story car park – wrong on so many levels.
First of all, don’t arse about with “Anarchy In The UK”. Whatever you may think of the Pistols’ debut single, you can’t deny its place in (punk) rock history. Secondly, if you are going to mess with it, at least retain Johnny Rotten’s iconic (albeit phonically incorrect) phrasing. It’s “I am an anti-Christ, I am an anar-kaist”. Who are you Mr GreenJellÿ to correct Johnny Rotten? Thirdly, this whole Flintstones thing had already been done before by The Screaming Blue Messiahs with their 1988 Top 30 hit “I Wanna Be A Flintstone”. Hardly original. Fourthly, the costumes. Obviously that’s meant to be Fred and Barney but who’s the third one meant to be? Bam-Bam? Just crap. Oh and was it really wise to accessorise Barney’s costume with a skinhead look and ‘Oi’ on the side of his head given some of the links to white nationalist groups like the National Front the movement was perceived to have. Finally, it had zero musical value but worse than that even, it wasn’t funny. At all.
Rather predictably the song would make it onto the soundtrack to the 1994 live action movie TheFlintstones alongside that Screaming Blue Messiahs track and “(Meet) The Flintstones” by The B-52s who renamed themselves The BC-52s for the release. How we laughed.
Another low now as we return to that horrible sub genre of dance music, the reworking of pop songs as dance floor fillers. There was a lot of this sort of nonsense around this time from the likes of Undercover and Rage and now here was Sarah Washington with a danced up version of “I Will Always Love You”. What a nasty thing this was and totally unnecessary. Whitney Houston’s version of the Dolly Parton classic had been No 1 for ten weeks between Dec ‘92 and Feb ‘93. Did we really need to hear another version of it so soon?
Apparently we did as Sarah Washington’s version made No 12. She attempted to repeat the trick with her follow up, a dance version of George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” but fortunately that didn’t make the Top 40. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of this movement as 1995 saw Nicki French go Top 5 with a danced up version of Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse Of The Heart”. Oh the horror.
It’s a hat-trick of lows as we get “River Of Dreams” by Billy Joel. I said last time this was on the show that it’s one of Billy’s worst ever compositions and I haven’t changed my mind in the meanwhile. Of course, that’s just my humble opinion and others may have a different take. Someone who definitely did was Peter from Spearfish, South Dakota who had this to say on the songfacts.com website:
I think God was really speaking to Billy Joel but Billy Joel decided to ignore God and it’s his own fault if he ends up in hell but you never know
Gulp! Well, Billy does include some biblical references in the song and he does consider himself an atheist so maybe those sorts of comments were always going to happen.
“River Of Dreams” peaked at No 3.
Dear God! I think we’ve hit the lowest of the lows as we encounter BadBoysInc. Inevitably, given the rise to the top of Take That, boy bands were springing up left, right and centre in the 90s. Bad Boys Inc were one of the first of these pretenders to cling onto their coat tails hitting immediately with debut single “Don’t Talk About Love”. The work of evil pop mastermind Ian Levine, who himself had produced Take That’s first three singles, they went down the same promotion route as Gary Barlow and co doing nightclub PAs to get their name out there. They also seemed to have adopted their dance moves and stage set up with the lead singer doing all the vocal lifting and the other three just…well…dancing. The song is the usual teeny bop by numbers fare but really they didn’t have anything to make them stand out and certainly nothing to rival Take That. They had one hit wonder written all over them and yet they notched up six chart hits in total including one Top 10! Even their name was terrible. Was it meant to channel some of that other boy band that were the actual rivals to Take That at the time East 17? Bad Boys Inc? Bad Boys Stink more like.
As Kevin Rowland once sang, “Let’s Get This Straight From The Start”. Yes, “Mr Vain” by CultureBeat does sound like Snap!’s “Rhythm Is A Dancer”. There are more similarities though. Both songs went to No 1 in the UK and both were made by German Eurodance acts. There always been a couple of things I never understood about “Mr. Vain” though. Who was ‘Mr. Raider’ as referenced in the lyrics and why does female vocalist Tania Evans insist on being called ‘Mr. Vain’?
Some Breakers now and we start with Ice Cube (an ice breaker?) and “Check Yo Self”. The man behind many of the lyrics on legendary NWA album “Straight Outta Compton”, Ice Cube had left the band acrimoniously in 1989 and was already onto his third solo album by this point. “The Predator” was a No 1 record in America selling 193,000 copies in its first week. This track was the third single to be released from it and gave Ice Cube his second consecutive UK Top 40 hit after “It Was A Good Day” when it peaked at No 36.
As host Tony Dortie says in his intro, the track heavily borrows from the mother of all rap tunes “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel. Widely recognised as the song that took rap into the mainstream, its influence can also be found in work by artists like Genesis (the laugh in “Mama”) and Robbie Williams (the “it’s like a jungle” line in “Millennium”).
This next one literally only exists for me on this 30 seconds clip. I can’t recall it at all from 1993 and I can’t find anything much about the act online in 2022. To be fair, their name doesn’t aid an internet search – what did I expect to find if I put AliAndFrazier into Google? Whoever they were/are, their song was a cover of the Althea And Donna 1978 classic “Uptown Top Ranking”. Not a straight cover though you understand. This was 1993 so they ragga-fied it with a rap and tried to update the sound by including that horrible sax parp from recent No 1 “All That She Wants” by Ace Of Base. There’s also a hint of “That’s The Way (I Like It)” by KC And The Sunshine Band. Just…why?
Like Althea and Donna, “Uptown Top Ranking” was Ali and Frazier’s only hit when it peaked at No 33. Unlike Althea and Donna, nobody remembers the musical version of Ali and Frazier.
Whatever you may think of Jay Kay, he was ahead of his time when it came to green issues. He was the funk version of Julian “Salt Water” Lennon. “EmergencyOnPlanetEarth” was the title track of Jamiroquai’s debut album and also the third track to be released from it as a single. Sonically, it was very much in the same vein as it’s two predecessors but somehow I think I liked it better than those other tracks. The sci-fi themed video stands up pretty well although it’s dated by the inclusion of a public pay phone.
This would be the last time we’d see Jamiroquai for a whole year bar a re-release of debut flop single “When You Gonna Learn”. When they did return, it was with “Space Cowboy” which sounded the same as everything else they’d released.
Talking of debut singles being re-released, here’s “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” by Spin Doctors. Originally out in October of 1992, it made No 17 on the US charts but it wasn’t released over here until “Two Princes” had been a hit. I’d forgotten what a nifty tune this is. Some great slap bass playing and a searing guitar riff make for a great groove (man!). It should have been a bigger hit than its No 23 peak.
Songwriter and lead vocalist Chris Barron was initially subjected to accusations of misogyny due to the song’s lyrics (the opening line is “It’s been a whole lot easier since the bitch left town”) with many assuming it was written about an ex-girlfriend but it was actually about a toxic relationship with his stepmother. “The song is really about life being short so we should all be nice to one other” he told Sky magazine in an interview.
The track would turn up on SesameStreet in 1995 as “Little Miss Count Along”. There’s no bigger accolade.
Finally! A song on a ragga tip in 1993 that I didn’t mind! I refer to Apache Indian and his song “Boom Shack-A-Lak” which was a track from his “Nuff Vibes EP”. Inevitably, people made comparisons with it and Shaggy’s “Oh Carolina” and Apache Indian (real name Steven Kapur) himself references this in the BBC documentary Top Of The Pops – The Story Of 1993. He admits that he was influenced by the likes of the Shaggy, Chaka Demus and Pliers etc who were releasing reggae style songs with a 60s pop twist to them and so thought he’d have a brash at that himself. His breakthrough hit from earlier in the year “Arranged Marriage” had been nothing like “Boom Shack-A-Lak” (a made up word with a similar meaning to ‘Wagwan’ Kapur says in the documentary) with its Bhangra rhythms and instrumentation but he could see where the money trail was going and duly followed.
Cautious not to appear to be treading on his buddy Shaggy’s toes, he played him the track and just about asked his permission to release it. Being the magnanimous fellow he is, Shaggy wasn’t at all bothered that Kapur appeared to be “nicking his shit” (to quote Shaggy) and the rest was history. Easily Apache Indian’s biggest hit, it went to No 5 in the UK and has been used extensively in film such as the Dumb And Dumber movies and Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (surely they should have used a song by Shaggy?!). It sounds like it should have been included in one of the Austin Powers movies but as far as I can tell it wasn’t used.
I’m guessing hopes were high in the offices of Aswad and Yazz’s record labels for the rejuvenating powers of this cover version of Ace’s “How Long”. With both artists’ careers in need of a shot in the arm, surely a reggaed-up take on an airplay classic would do the trick? ‘No!’ was the resounding answer from the record buying public as despite this TOTP appearance, it got no higher than its peak this week of No 31. Yazz looks pretty different to her “The Only Way Is Up” heyday with her short peroxide blonde cut replaced by a longer hairdo tied up at the back. When she went to get that short crop, her hairdresser looked at her cascading tresses and said ‘How long?’. I’ll get me coat.
Take That are dethroned at the top of the charts as Freddie Mercury takes over with “Living On My Own”. I just didn’t get this. To me, it’s a nothing song that probably deserved no more than its chart high of No 50 when originally released in 1985. OK, you could make a case for a surge in record sales when an artist dies but in Freddie’s case that was back in 1991, one year and 263 days before this song made it to No 1. There had already been two Freddie solo singles released posthumously and neither got anywhere near the top of the charts so why this one? Was it to do with the No More Brothers remix? Well, whatever the record had, it would turn out to be the last ever entry for Freddie as a solo artist in the UK Top 40 singles chart.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Green Jellÿ
Anarchy In The UK
Never!
2
Sarah Washington
I Will Always Love You
No chance
3
Billy Joel
River Of Dreams
Not likely
4
Bad Boys Inc
Don’t Talk About Love
NO!
5
Culture Beat
Mr. Vain
I did not
6
Ice Cube
Check Yo Self
No
7
Ali And Frazier
Uptown Top Ranking
I’d rather get punched in the face
8
Jamiroquai
Emergency On Planet Earth
No but my wife had the album
9
Spin Doctors
Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong
No but maybe I should have
10
Apache Indian
Boom Shack-A-Lak
It was fun but no
11
Aswad / Yazz
How Long
Too long – no
12
Freddie Mercury
Living On My Own
And no
Disclaimer
I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).
All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.
June 1993 saw the demise of two big names in the world of comedy – one a performer and one a TV show. The former was comedian Les Dawson who died on the same day this TOTP aired aged just 62. The latter was US sitcom Cheers which ended this year after 275 episodes over 11 seasons. Channel 4 broadcast the final three shows over the weekend following this TOTP. Both had a musical element to them. Dawson included his wonky piano playing in his act whilst Cheers had one of the greatest theme tunes of all time…
Let’s see if any of the tunes on this TOTP are anywhere near as good as Gary Portnoy’s famous song…
Certainly not this one! As I said in the last post when confronted by Eurodance merchant Haddaway opening the show, I’d totally had enough of that particular genre of music by this point. This time it’s the turn of Snap! to be the first act on with their new single “Do You See The Light (Looking For)”. The TOTP producers often seemed to top the show’s running order with a dance act. In recent weeks we’ve had Stereo MCs, Felix and 2 Unlimited in addition to Haddaway. I guess it made sense to try and begin proceedings with a bang. The year zero revamp hadn’t quite let go of the party atmosphere era of Michael Hurll. Having said that, the performance here of Snap! featuring Niki Harris seems to suggest a soirée rather than a massive rave-up. I have to say that as objectionable as his views were, the group seemed to lose something when rapper Turbo B left. The performance here seems very lacklustre. Maybe if the set hadn’t been so sparse it might have sparked things into life a bit. And why do the backing singers resemble water nymphs?
This track was taken from “The Madman’s Return” album and the album version of it is quite different with vocals by Thea Austin instead of Niki Harris, a rap by the aforementioned Turbo B and even a (slightly) different title in “See The Light”. The single version peaked at No 10 and No 14 in 2002 when it was remixed and rereleased.
Spin Doctors are still going up the charts? Checking its stats, “Two Princes” remained on the chart for 18 weeks so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s a pretty nifty tune all said and done and there was a brief moment in time when the band seemed to be the next big thing. Parent album “Pocketful Of Kryptonite” went to No 2 and achieved platinum sales in Europe and yet somehow it all seemed to stall and fall away on both sides of the Atlantic.
If I’m honest, the follow up singles just weren’t as good. “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” and “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues” just didn’t capture the imagination in the same way as “Two Princes” although in the case of the latter, in a three way race of Superman themed singles, they definitely finish above Laurie Anderson and Black Lace.
“Two Princes” peaked at No 3 in the UK.
A proper pop moment next as TOTP brings us the return of PetShopBoys. Neil and Chris had been away for only 18 months or so but their last release had been their first official Best Of album “Discography” which on reflection felt like a line in the sand drawing to a close the first part of their career. What would the first material of their next phase be like? Well, not too dissimilar to their previous work to be fair. “Can You Forgive Her” didn’t feel like a massive departure from what had gone before but then Neil Tennant’s voice is so distinctive that it overrides sometimes any potential musical deviation on their behalf. Not always of course. For example, something like “Jealousy” or “Se A Vida É” sound nothing like “West End Girls” but in the case of “Can You Forgive Her”, it didn’t seem, to me anyway, like a radical new sound. Not that it wasn’t any good either though. It had a strident feel to it, enabled by a punchy chorus that demanded to be heard. And heard it was as it gave the duo their first Top 10 hit in two years after their previous three singles all failed to make that achievement.
Somehow though it always feels overshadowed by the second single to be lifted from parent album “Very” which was the enormous hit that was the cover of Village People’s “Go West”. Initial copies of the album came in an orange CD jewel case featuring raised bumps which resembled Lego. In those days, the Our Price chain I worked for didn’t use security tagging and so the CDs we sold weren’t ‘live’ on the shelves as it were. The actual CDs were filed away behind the counter so the cases were empty. However, the manager of the store I was working in when the album came out thought the Lego case so nickable that we kept those behind the counter as well and had a dummy case on display that used the inner back sleeve to say what it was. Genius! Except it was a pain in the arse to put together when selling it to a customer and we also had a few people ask if our dummy sleeve was somehow a different version of the album. It would be another five years before I worked in an Our Price that displayed CDs live.
Anyway, back to the show and this performance really does give us the pop moment I referred to earlier. There’s so much to unpack here. The over exaggerated pointy dunce hats, Neil Tennant in a high chair, the cricket bat wielding space cadet backing dancers, a huge egg on stage for no reason but most of all there was Chris Lowe. The perennially motionless man moved more in that one performance than in all his previous ones added together. What had got into him? There were even what passed for dance moves! Maybe I was wrong. Perhaps this really was a different Pet Shop Boys to what had gone before.
1993 really was the year ragga/dancehall took over the charts. After Shaggy, Shabba and Snow came the ludicrously named Chaka Demus AndPliers. Opening themselves up to all sorts of tool related jibes, this pair of toasters joined forces in 1991 and released “Murder She Wrote” the following year in America to great acclaim. The follow up was “Tease Me” and the hordes lapped it up sending it to No 3 in the UK Top 40. The lyrics were fairly clear about the song’s subject matter with references to ‘reaching climax’ and its title of course. There’s also that shout out line which seemed to encapsulate the whole movement – “Number One In The World”. I’m sure that seemed to feature on every song of this type after that.
Chaka Demus and Pliers have bought all their mates with them to the TOTP studio for a jolly up whilst the camera man seemed very intent on giving us multiple views of the gyrating female backing dancers. Ahem. We’ll also be seeing lots more of CD and P before 1993 is out.
And the fascination with all things erotic thriller continues. I’m guessing IndecentProposal must have been performing well at the box office to generate this much of a profile. It’s another outing for “Ordinary Love” by Sade which was featured heavily in the film but was not actually on the soundtrack. After last week’s glimpse of the mermaid promo video, we get a live by satellite performance from New York this time. Sade Adu looks stunning as ever but it’s the two guitarists in the background who have caught my eye. They spend the first half of the performance not even bothering to mime playing their instruments but doing the nerd shuffle together whilst clicking their fingers in unison. It doesn’t really seem appropriate for an artist as sophisticated as Sade. Bet they got a bollocking when the cameras were turned off.
Therapy? were enjoying a huge breakthrough year in 1993. After the “Shortsharpshock EP” featuring lead track “Screamager” made the Irish rockers bona fide Top 10 artists in March, the follow up was also an EP. “Face The Strange” featured four tracks of which “Turn” was chosen to promote it. Clearly the EP’s title is a David Bowie reference being a lyric from his song “Changes”. I learned recently that I know someone who met Bowie and not just met but took him out for a drink around about 1972 just as he was launching his Ziggy Stardust era. I know! There’s a few Bowie super fans that I know who would be blown away by my friend’s recollections. What’s that? The Therapy? song? Oh, I didn’t like it much. Sorry.
The Breakers are their usual eclectic/bonkers mix of artists starting with the evergreen Cliff Richard. Despite being 52 at the time and having had his first hit 25 years ago, Cliff was showing no signs of slowing down in 1993. In fact, the decade was going pretty well for him so far. He’d already clocked up a No 1 in “Saviour’s Day” and four other Top 10 hits. Also having a fine old time of it around now was Maxi Priest who’d had a hit twice with Shabba Ranks (albeit with the same song in both cases) and who’d supplied the ‘Shabba!’ sample for the massive selling “Mr Loverman” single. To add to his collection of chart connections came “Human Work Of Art”. You see, Maxi had released this as a single from his “Bonafide” album three years prior but it had failed to chart.
It was recycled for Cliff’s 1993 album called…erm…”The Album” and this time made No 24. It sounds every inch a Cliff record and you’d be hard pressed to guess at its reggae-fied earlier incarnation. It’s also utterly awful under his guardianship. Yes, it’s a polished production but then you can polish a turd of course.
I can’t find the official video online so here’s it being performed on SurpriseSurprise.
From the despair of another banal Cliff record to…where? Well, fortunately it’s ManicStreetPreachers with their new single “From Despair To Where” (ahem). OK, firstly weren’t they have meant to have split up by now? Wasn’t that their mission statement to make one blow your socks off, anarchistic album then dissolve the band? Clearly that was just bravado then. What they actually did was to record second album “Gold Against The Soul” which I liked enough to buy but which the fan base has always dissed as the worst album in their back catalogue. I’m sure I heard an interview with James Dean Bradfield once where he was asked to rank the band’s albums in order of merit and even he put it bottom of the list.
Maybe debut “Generation Terrorists” had raised the bar and expectations too high but the music press gave it mixed reviews at best. Maybe fan favourite and third album “The Holy Bible” would have been a more acceptable choice with its themes of human suffering and bleakness. Was “Gold Against The Soul” seen as too radio friendly, too (gulp) corporate rock? It sounded alright to my ears with the lead single ticking all my aural boxes. It swoops and soars but bites as well with lines like ‘there’s nothing nice in my head’. It had all of that and yet wasn’t even the best track on the album for me. I liked this version of the band a lot but then I’m not a paid up member of the Manics army who could shoot my opinion down in flames I’m sure.
What I’m not sure about is the video which is basically some moody shots of the band (Richie looks especially cool) intertwined with some sepia tinted clips which seem to suggest a sci-fi /horror film but it’s all a bit blurry to make a clear judgement although that look like an alien autopsy in the thumbnail below.
The Manics of course did do a TV show theme tune when they covered “Suicide Is Painless” – the theme tune from M*A*S*H. Better than the theme to Cheers? It’s a tough call but yes possibly.
The SisterSledge revival bandwagon continues apace with a rerelease of their 1984 hit “Thinking Of You”. Remixed as the (RAMP Radio Mix), it was the last of three singles taken from the Greatest Hits compilation “The Very Best Of Sister Sledge 1973-93” following “We Are Family” and “Lost In Music”. It would peak at No 17 just six places lower than its 1984 counterpart. However the song dated back to 1979 when it was a track on the “We Are Family” album and issued as the B-side to the initial release of “Lost In Music”.
Reading that paragraph back it seems like the group made a 40+ year career based around just three songs that have been recycled over and over again. Lead singer Kathy Sledge even did her own cover version of “Thinking Of You” with house duo Aristofreeks in 2015. OK look, I know there’s also “He’s The Greatest Dancer” and “Frankie” in their repertoire but the former is very similar to the “Family/Lost/Thinking” trilogy and the latter is one of the worst recordings of all time (and I’ve just had to listen to Cliff Richard’s “Human Work Of Art”). I doubt even the Sledge sisters want to be remembered for that one.
Sister Sledge have only released one more single since this. And guess what? It was a rerelease of “We Are Family” in 2004 which made No 93 on our charts.
Who? TheTimeFrequency? Sounds like a phrase Dr Who might say. Have we seen this lot before? Can’t remember now. So many of these dance acts about. Anyway, “The Ultimate High” was a track off their “Power Zone EP” and sounds very much like a knock off version of “Insanity” by Oceanic to me but then, as I’ve said many times before, I’m no dance music aficionado.
The Time Frequency were from Scotland so I wonder if they knew fellow Scottish dance acts Primal Scream and The Shamen or is that a bit like an American, who on meeting someone from London, asks them if they know their cousin who lives in Notting Hill?
Lisa Stansfield? Again? It can’t be! She seems to be on every week at the moment. Given the high level of exposure it got, I’m surprised that “In All The Right Places” didn’t get higher than its No 8 peak. She’s back in the studio this time and has gone full on Louise Brooks with her haircut. No messing about like the other week with that half hearted Brett Anderson-esque wedge style. The way the stage has been set up with her first name and first name only in lights gives it a feel of a residency at Las Vegas. In fact, I could just imagine Liza Minnelli up there belting this one out.
Lisa will be back in October with her “So Natural” album and single.
UB40 have made it to the top spot deposing Ace Of Base in the process. Were they on tour at this time as it’s the video for “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” yet again this week? I’m guessing that the director got the band to perform emerging into a tight corridor to link in with the themes of claustrophobia and paranoia that the film it was taken from (Sliver) clearly was based around. Ironically, a few years down the line, the band fractured into two different identities due to internal arguments and there’s no way that Ali and Robin Campbell would ever be in such close proximity to each other like that again.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Snap!
Do You See The Light (Looking For)
Never happening
2
Spin Doctors
Two Princes
Liked it, didn’t buy it
3
Pet Shop Boys
Can You Forgive Her
No but I have it on their Pop Art Best Of
4
Chaka Demus And Pliers
Tease Me
As if
5
Sade
No Ordinary Love
Nope
6
Therapy?
Face The Strange EP
Nah
7
Cliff Richard
Human Work Of Art
Of course not
8
Manic Street Preachers
From Despair To Where
No but I bought the album
9
Sister Sledge
Thinking Of You
No
10
The Time Frequency
Power Zone EP
Not likely
11
Lisa Stansfield
In All The Right Places
Negative
12
UB40
(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You
And no
Disclaimer
I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).
All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.
A rare Friday night appearance for TOTP which has been shifted from its historical Thursday slot to accommodate the previous night’s FA Cup replay. This would be the last time it would ever happen after occurring three times consecutively in the 80s and a further time in 1990. Was it worth the extra 24 hours wait? Let’s find out but it does include nine ‘new’ songs so I guess that’s a good thing?
…or maybe not. Has there ever been a more lifeless opening to an episode of TOTP? “Stars” was the third hit for British DJ and producer Francis Wright aka Felix though I’m not entirely convinced that it even qualifies as a dance track so lacking in energy is it. It’s not helped by the guy fronting the song. Talk about a lackadaisical performer?! Seriously, put some effort into it!
I didn’t know this until now but apparently “Stars” is a cover version of a song originally recorded by Sylvester – yes that Sylvester, the disco ‘queen’ of “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” fame. I have to admit that’s the only track I know from his back catalogue and even then only via the Jimmy Somerville cover from 1990. As such, I had to look up his original version of “Stars” and, perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s superior to the Felix take on it in every way. I’m no disco aficionado by any stretch but a tone deaf music hating hermit can hear the difference.
“Stars” was already at its peak of No 29. Felix would have two more chart singles, both of which were remixes of debut hit “Don’t You Want Me”.
OK a dodgy start admittedly but the next song would turn out to be the second biggest selling single of 1993! Given the way the year has panned out so far though, I’m not sure that’s much of an accolade. The song is “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You”, the band is UB40 and both are protagonists in a tale as old of time of commercial popularity not always equating to cultural worth.
Without a Top 10 hit since the Robert Palmer collaboration “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” in late 1990, UB40 were suddenly back with their first ever single to enter the charts inside the Top 10. Well, 1993 was the year of reggae/ragga/dancehall I guess so why wouldn’t the UK’s most well known reggae band want a piece of that action? Except there was an element of the accidental about this future No 1 record that belies the notion that this was pure cynicism on behalf of the Brummies. Their cover of the Elvis 1961 hit was recorded for submission to the soundtrack of a rom-com starring Nicolas Cage called Honeymoon In Vegas with said soundtrack being made up of cover versions of Elvis tunes. What the band didn’t realise was that there version of the song wasn’t the only one recorded and a version by U2’s Bono was the one selected for inclusion.
In fairness, the soundtrack was a very country music affair with the likes of Trisha Yearwood, Dwight Yoakam and Willie Nelson featuring so UB40 would probably have been an outlier in such company. Their recording lay in the Virgin vaults unused and unloved (even by the band themselves most of whom didn’t want it put on their latest album “Promises And Lies”) until it was discovered by film music supervisor Tim Sexton who convinced director Phillip Noyce to use it in his erotic thriller flick Sliver. I think therein lies some of the problem for UB40 and their version of the song in that it is associated with a film that is generally perceived to be a duffer, hogwash, a right old stinker. Clearly all involved were hoping for a BasicInstinct 2 – Sharon Stone, who infamously made her name by crossing her legs in that film, was even on board. It was universally panned by critics and received nominations for the Golden Raspberry Awards in just about every category. Maybe subliminally, the brickbats the movie received tainted people’s view of UB40’s track.
Or maybe not. Maybe I’m the one spouting hogwash? After all, it topped the charts both in the UK and in America where it was No 1 for seven weeks. It’s just that retrospectively it doesn’t seem to have stood the rest of time too well. Compared to say Pet Shop Boys’ treatment of “Always On Your Mind”, it just doesn’t seem very cherished in the canon of Elvis covers. I’m not a fan I have to say. It’s all very clunky sounding and what was with the altering of the song title and the adding of brackets? Was that meant to imply that this wasn’t just a cover and that they had in fact literally made it into another song entirely or as the infernal Louis Walsh would say ‘made the song their own’? Do you know what, I think that’s enough time spent on it for one post. After all, it’ll be back on soon enough.
We stick with the new songs with a man who, despite being famous for having one of the sweetest of soul voices, had never pulled up many trees when it came to having big hit singles in the UK. Prior to his No 2 duet on “The Best Things In Life Are Free” with Janet Jackson the previous Autumn, Luther Vandross never had a Top 10 hit in this country. Sure his albums had sold well but somehow it has never quite translated into singles success. Given that Janet Jackson boost though, could “Little Miracles (Happen Every Day)” bring him a huge hit under his own steam? Well, ‘No’ is the blunt but honest answer as it topped out at No 28 making it the second single on this TOTP that an appearance on the show failed to propel any further up the charts. Was the programme losing its power to generate sales or were these just anomalies?
Luther Vandross has never done anything for me I have to say, either his uptempo numbers or slow ballads of which this single falls into the latter category. It sounds like a vocal exercise in search of a tune to me. Maybe if they’d spent the budget for the performance on a gospel backing choir (which clearly exists on the record) instead of his Showaddywaddy style jacket then maybe things might have turned out better.
Next we get to gatecrash that Bon Jovi party as host Tony Dortie promised at the start of the show but quite what did he mean by that? Surely not exclusive access backstage or to the after show party at some swanky nightclub. Well, no of course. It’s as another of those ‘live’ crossovers to a concert date, this time in Glasgow. Wasn’t the last time they did this for Bruce Springsteen also in Glasgow? I think it was. Must have had some sort of arrangement with the venue which Wikipedia tells me was the SEC Centre. Jon Bon Jovi’s singing on “In Your Arms” here sounds a little bit strained like he’s singing from his throat rather than his diaphragm but Richie Sambora is always reliable with his double neck guitar to the forefront. Attaboy Richie!
After using up my Jon Bon Jovi waxwork story in the last post, I’ll have to resort to pulling out the tale of my disgrace on the dance floor of a Sunderland nightclub this time. Having imbibed too much alcohol on a night out when a student at Sunderland Poly, I crashed out in the toilets of Rascals club and made rather a mess of a toilet bowl. My friend Robin came to check out if I was OK and, seeing the state of me, suggested we call it a night and leave. “I’m not going home ‘til I’ve danced to the Jovi” came my reply from the cubicle. “OK, let’s get back out there” encouraged Robin. “I can’t stand up” I declared in a sorrowful tone.
“In Your Arms” peaked at No 9.
Another new song and another turkey. What do CharlesAndEddie have in common with the aforementioned Luther Vandross? Nothing really except they both recorded songs called “House Is Not A Home”. Well, almost. Luther’s was a version of the marvellous Bacharach and David tune which actually includes an indefinite article ‘a’ in its title and which Dionne Warwick famously had a hit with. The Charles and Eddie song was written by the latter and was a bit shit. Oh come on! It was! Some nondescript soul on a faux Motown tip? No thanks.
The whole Charles And Eddie phenomenon was basically a one trick pony revolving around that horribly catchy “Would I Lie To You” chart topper. Nothing else they released came close to its success and six months on from it nobody was that interested in the duo any more as evidenced by the No 29 peak of this single. Still, at least they could say incontrovertibly that they were not a one hit wonder.
Someone in the TOTP production team must have been a big Runrig fan! The Celtic rockers bagged (or maybe blagged) themselves a first ever appearance on the show with previous hit “Wonderful”, a single that only made it to No 29 in the charts, and now they were back in the TOTP studio with the follow up “The Greatest Flame” and this one only made it to No 36! Surely these were Breakers at best?!
What’s that you say Tony Dortie? They were at No 2 in the album charts? Oh, is that why they made the show’s running order? They were in the album chart feature? Only, the onscreen caption doesn’t say that and, having checked the chart record of parent album “Amazing Things”, something else doesn’t quite add up. Yes, it did go to No 2 in the charts but that was in its first week of release in March. By the time of this TOTP show it had dropped out of the chart altogether so it would appear Tony was telling some porkies.
As for the song, it’s so laboured and slow. It never picks up at any point – just one monotonous dirge. And I thought Felix were bad. They look like the most uncomfortable, unconvincing band ever to play the show. Last time the lead singer wore a leather jacket but he’s outdone himself this time in the naff stakes with a sleeveless version. I’m sorry if this sounds harsh but they look so out of place. Was this really what the kids wanted?!
Some Breakers now starting with DireStraits and a taster from their live album “On The Night” which I’d forgotten all about (I was quite prepared to stay in utter oblivion of its existence to be fair). The “Encores EP” was recorded to capture the band’s OnEveryStreetTour and included four tracks including “Your Latest Trick” which was the fifth and final single from their iconic “Brothers In Arms” album. Yes, despite my previous derogatory comments, it is an iconic album whether we like it or not. Looking at the track listing for “On The Night”, four of the ten tracks on it were from “Brothers In Arms”, the same amount as from the “On Every Street” album the tour was promoting. Make of that what you will.
Of the other three tracks on the EP, I only know the theme from LocalHero. I’ve tried with this film, I really have but I just don’t get it. I have a friend who swears by it but I can’t see it. Literally. Nothing happens. I mean, yes there’s a plot but it’s so slow. Look, I can appreciate nuances and that not everything has to be all bangs and crashes like a Jerry Bruckheimer film but come on! I need something a bit more engaging.
Anyway, back to Dire Straits and I’m wondering if they’d have been better off choosing “Money For Nothing” to promote the EP. Surely more well known than “Your Latest Trick”. I mean, if the EP was purely designed just to help sell the live album. I’m basing that on the fact that the “Encores EP” only made it to No 31 in the charts. All part of the walk of life I suppose.
A song now that instantly reminds me of 1993 and which I think probably gets an unjustified bad rap. The SpinDoctors looked a bit like Nirvana and sounded a bit like a poppier version of Extreme when they weren’t doing acoustic ballads – too glib and uninformed? Probably but I’ve only got so much space in one blog post to describe these things so needs must. This lot were one of those bands that we cottoned on to long after the US audience had shown an interest – their debut album “Pocketful Of Kryptonite” had been released nearly two years prior to this appearance with the singles “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” and this one “Two Princes” both having been hits months before they transferred over here.
The latter was the first and biggest hit the band had over here ultimately peaking at No 3. A funky, jumping number with an instant hook that attached itself to your brain immediately refusing to let go, it was a genuine crossover hit that allowed the band to traverse from their alternative rock trappings into the mainstream. It was a great airplay hit as well helping it to swell sales. I liked it a lot. So did a friend of mine who was so enamoured he asked me to purchase the album for him on my Our Price store discount – I’ve never asked him what he made of the album.
A few more hits followed but “Two Princes” would be the song that the band would be remembered for and it seemed to me that they paved the way for a number of American rock bands with an alternative edge but pop sound to make inroads into our charts like Gin Blossoms, Semisonic and Hootie And The Blowfish.
Somehow though “Two Princes” became an albatross around the band’s neck. It was rated No 21 in Blender magazine’s 50 Worst Songs Ever poll and featured in a sketch on the Sarah Silverman Program as evidence of someone having something wrong with them when “Two Princes” is the only song on their iPod which they’ve owned for five years.
Some songs are just so ingrained in our brains/hearts/cultural lives that it’s hard to remember their initial impact on us or even their backstory. For instance, I had totally forgotten that “Jump Around” by House Of Pain was originally released in October of 1992 and had only made No 32 in the UK charts. It was rereleased seven months later and went Top 10.
This was literally a huge record both in its sound and reach. I heard this played at every Manchester nightclub I went to around this time (not that many admittedly but a few) and was guaranteed to fill the floor, turning it into a heaving, sweaty mass moving in cohesion just like the scenes in the single’s video. It’s the high pitched squeal that is repeated 66 times during the course of the record that makes it. The origin of the source material is disputed. Some say it’s from Prince’s “Gett Off” while others have posited the theory that it’s “Shoot Your Shot” by Junior Walker And The All Stars. The band themselves say it’s actually Divine Styler’s “Ain’t Sayin’ Nothin’” which samples “Shoot Your Shot”. Whatever the truth, it made “Jump Around” one of the most instantly recognisable tracks of the 90s.
An American hip-hop trio comprising Everlast, Danny Boy and DJ Lethal, they styled themselves as Irish-American urchins both in their music (their follow up was called “Shamrocks And Shenanigans”) and their image and branding (their logo included a shamrock and the legend ‘fine malt lyrics’). They never came close to replicating the success of “Jump Around” and split in 1996. Everlast forged a successful solo career and the band gave reunited in 2010 and again in 2017.
Tina Turner is on the rise with “I Don’t Wanna Fight” after her TOTP appearance last week. Taken from the soundtrack to her film biopic What’sLoveGotToDoWithIt, it will peak at No 7. That soundtrack did even better going all the way to No 1 and selling 300,000 copies in the UK alone. I was surprised at the time about its success given that Tina’s “Simply The Best” compilation had been a huge seller over Xmas of 1991.
However, the music supervisors of the film were clever as the soundtrack wasn’t just another Greatest Hits under a different name. The track listing was mostly made up of re-recorded versions of songs from the Ike And Tina Turner era rather than her massive rock hits from the mid 80s onwards so there was very little overlap with “Simply The Best”. The film’s plot is mainly based around that part of Tina’s life leading up to the climax of her finally leaving her abusive relationship with Ike. Only two tracks feature on both albums – “What’s Love Got To Do With It” (unsurprisingly) and “Nutbush City Limits”. Add to that the power of a popular film and its ability to sell soundtracks (look at how TheBodyguard OST flew off the shelves) and I don’t really know why I was surprised at its success at all.
There were two sets at Glastonbury this year that I watched in full (on TV you understand as we established weeks ago that I’ve never actually been to Glastonbury). One was Paul McCartney (along with millions of other people) but the second was a bit more of a surprising choice – to me as much as anybody – and that was SaintEtienne. I found myself alone in the house on the Saturday afternoon with wife and child out and so I tuned into the Glasto coverage. Saint Etienne were on and I watched their whole set from start to finish and enjoyed it.
I was surprised at how deep their catalogue was and that they had far more decent tunes than I remembered but more than that I enjoyed their live performance which was a huge improvement on the last time I saw them 30 years previously. Yes, around 1993 I caught them in Manchester on the So Tough tour. They were supported by a pre-mainstream Pulp who were by far the better band on the night. Sarah Cracknell and co played for 43 minutes with backing tapes and at the end of their set Sarah said “We don’t do encores, we’re not a rock band”. I wasn’t impressed.
Fast forward to 2022 and Sarah seemed in a much better mood and genuinely happy that the band could still command an audience. She was even still rocking the feather boa look she wore on this TOTP and her backing singer still had the same bob haircut. The song they perform on the show here – “Who Do You Think You Are” – was actually a double A-side with “Hobart Paving” with the former actually being a cover of a 1974 hit from OpportunityKnocks winners Candlewick Green. No really. I mean that most sincerely folks (ask your parents, kids!).
The single peaked at No 23 but they would return with the wonderful but cruelly ignored Xmas single “I Was Born On Christmas Day” with national treasure Tim Burgess of The Charlatans.
Oh and one final thing. Why is Ian ‘Mac’ McCulloch* of Echo And The Bunnymen on drums in this performance?!
* I know it’s not really him
That didn’t take long! AceOfBase are No 1 already with “All That She Wants”. After the second best selling single of the year made its debut earlier in the show via UB40, here comes 1993’s third best selling single. Not surprising really as it was No 1 in just about every country in Europe and also in the US.
I didn’t get it though. Sure it was catchy but it was also intensely annoying which is not something I’m looking for in a record. Apparently though Ace Of Base have quite the legacy with artists like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Clean Bandit and even Beck have quoted them as an influence.
Perhaps rather stupidly I always thought the line ‘all that she wants is another baby’ meant that the song’s protagonist literally wanted another baby (i.e. becoming pregnant). It turns out – and I surely would have realised this if I’d bothered to listen to the lyrics more closely – the word ‘baby’ referred to a sexual partner and perhaps more explicitly a one night stand. The clue is in the very next line ‘she’s gone tomorrow’. How did I misunderstand this?!
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All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 